Did the Romans keep a record of Jesus?

Answer 1

A number of individual Romans either met or knew who Jesus was. Pilate certainly met Him on the day of Jesus' trial. A centurion who asked Jesus to heal his servant also did, and also had evidently heard of Him as a healer previously. But in a wider context, Jesus was just another Jewish teacher and not significant politically to the Romans, as the Christians later were.

Answer 2

There is nothing in any of the contemporary Roman records about the trial and death of Jesus. This would not be at all surprising if the crucifixion went without incident, but the gospels say that many miraculous things happened, that could be expected to have been recorded or at least mentioned in a letter to the emperor. Yet there is no mention of the darkness that descended over the whole land for three hours, or of the earthquake, the dead who rose up out of their graves and walked into Jerusalem where they were seen by many, or even of the resurrection.

There is a pseudepigraphical letter written in the name of Pontius Pilate, some two centuries after the death of Jesus, but it is so transparently a forgery that it can not be considered a record of the death of Jesus.

Answer 3

A:No, there is no contemporary extra-biblical mention of Jesus. Because this omission seemed embarrassing for some early Christians, letters attributed to Pontius Pilate and his wife were written and circulated, but they were soon recognised as obvious forgeries.

Even Jesus' near-contemporary, Philo of Alexandria, never mentioned Jesus, although he wrote about every Jewish religious movement known to him. Josephus does briefly mention Jesus in his Antiquities of the Jews, but this was based on what Christians believed fifty years after the Jesus is believedto have been crucified.

Answer 4

There is no known record of the life, the trial or the crucifixion of Jesus outside the gospels, written either by the Romans or the Jews. If the gospels are in error, we would have no evidence Jesus ever lived in Palestine in the first century.

Answer 5

The Romans did not keep any records of Jesus. In as far as they were concerned he was an insignificant figure in a small backwater of their empire (Judea).